Fujifilm Sonosite, Inc.

Sonosite, Inc.

Sonosight, Inc.

William R Ogle

Justin M Coughlin

Mitchell S Kaplan

Michael R Hansen

Blake W Little

Lauren S Pflugrath

Steven G Danielson

Larry Greisel

Juin-Jet Hwang

Jacques Souquet

Methods and apparatuses for dynamic power reduction in ultrasound systems are described. Subsystems including a first subsystem to be placed in a reduced power consumption state are determined. The first subsystem includes a receive path having a receiver to receive acoustic signals representing echoes. A control subsystem to control clocking of the receive path in response to at least one of a plurality of real-time signals is determined. The control subsystem is configured to provide one or more clocks to the receive path to turn on the receiver while valid echo signals are expected to arrive at the receiver At least one of the plurality of real-time signals indicates a state of imaging operations. The control subsystem is configured to provide one or more clocks to the receive path during a first mode based on the state of the imaging operations.

Dynamic power reduction technique for ultrasound systems

A dynamic power reduction method and apparatus for use in an ultrasound system are described. In one embodiment, the ultrasound system comprises: a transducer assembly and imaging subsystem having a transmit data path having a transmitter to transmit acoustic signals and a receive data path having including signal acquisition circuitry with a receiver to receive acoustic signals representing echoes; a plurality of real-time signals indicative of status of imaging operations being performed by the transmit and receive paths; a clock generator to generate one or more clocks for use by the transmit and receive data paths; clock gating circuitry coupled to the clock generator and the transmit and receive paths and having circuits to gate clocks to at least one of the transmit and receive paths; and a clock gating controller coupled to the clock gating circuitry to control the circuits to gate or pass clock signals to at least one of the transmit and receive paths automatically in response to receipt of one or more signals from the plurality of real-time signals.

A hand held ultrasonic instrument is provided in a portable unit which performs both B mode and Doppler imaging. The instrument includes a transducer array mounted in a hand-held enclosure, with an integrated circuit transceiver connected to the elements of the array for the reception of echo signals. A digital signal processing circuit performs both B mode and Doppler signal processing such as filtering, detection and Doppler estimation, as well as advanced functions such as assembly of multiple zone focused scanlines, synthetic aperture formation, depth dependent filtering, speckle reduction, flash suppression, and frame averaging.

Ultrasonic signal processor for a hand held ultrasonic diagnostic

A hand held ultrasonic instrument is provided in a portable unit which performs both B mode and Doppler imaging. The instrument includes a transducer array mounted in a hand-held enclosure, with an integrated circuit transceiver connected to the elements of the array for the reception of echo signals. A digital beamformer is located in the hand-held enclosure for forming ultrasonic scanlines from the echo signals received by the elements of the array.

Hand held ultrasonic diagnostic instrument with digital beamformer

Growing community of inventors

Bothell, WA, United States of America

William R Ogle